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Computer-driven funds, including Renaissance Technologies, considered one of the best in the world, are believed to have lost heavily almost across the board this week.

Bankers said quantitative funds run by Tykhe Capital, another US hedge fund manager, are down 20% for August so far, while JP Morgan's Highbridge Capital Management has lost 6% in its statistical arbitrage fund. Bankers said DE Shaw is down 5% while State Street Global Advisors has also lost money in its quantitative equity strategies this week. Renaissance is down 3% so far this month.

Tykhe, Highbridge, DE Shaw and SSgA were not available for comment.

A spokesman for Renaissance, whose institutional fund is one of the largest quantitative hedge funds with $27bn (€20bn) of assets under management, said: "Markets have been up and down and a lot of people are deleveraging. It has not been pleasant but it is not a disaster."

A hedge fund manager specialising in managed futures, which relies on computer models to make investment decisions in the commodity and currency derivative markets, said: "Quantitative equity managers are being massacred this month, losses are 5% to 10% and more. I'm told someone has been liquidating positions in one of their funds, but these quant managers are all supposed to be doing different things and now they all appear to be correlated."

Goldman Sachs' flagship global alpha fund is down 16% for the year to date, bankers said, after continuing a run of losses. The firm's North American equity opportunities fund, which had $767m (€560m) in February, was down 15% for the year to the end of July, bankers said.

A quantitative manager said: "The falls are across the quant management board and that shows that, although the equity models may be superficially different, really they are variations on the same theme. Everyone has been taking long positions on value stocks and short positions on growth stocks, and now they are all making losses."